1. Field of the Invention
The present invention broadly relates to computer backup and restore technologies. The present invention also broadly relates to computer migration technologies.
2. Background
The periodic backup of computer system components, such as files, data, applications and the like, is a well-known and oft practiced approach to storing a useful copy of a computer system in a previous state, should the system malfunction in some important way. The storage of the back-up copy can then be used to restore the system to the previous state when the system returns to viability. This may be the most common form of system back-up and restoration.
In the general case, currently available disaster recovery tools create back-up copies of computer systems that can be summoned and transferred to new systems when there is a catastrophic failure. These tools are efficacious for transferring the back-up copy en masse to the new system. However, problems arise when the new system is dissimilar to the old system. When they are sufficiently dissimilar, the transfer can cause problems ranging from system instability, to partial inoperability, to complete inoperability.
Prior art responses to the aforementioned problems include completely overwriting the new operating system with the old one during a full system restore, in order to avoid system conflicts and instability. Using this approach, however, the new system will not be able to take advantage of the new features of the newer operating system, and may not be compatible with newer application software.
To avoid overwriting the new operating system, some prior art approaches merely restore critical data files, leaving out applications, user settings, user preferences, and user state information. Incidentally, none of the prior art disaster recovery approaches is believed to restore user settings, user preferences, and user state information on the new system, whether or not the new system is similar to the old system.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/378,999, filed Aug. 23, 1999, and titled “Application and Method for Transferring Information between Platforms,” and which is also assigned to the Assignee of the present Letters Patent, discloses a computer migration method for the efficient transfer of information between a source computer and a target computer. The source and target computers need not have matched hardware or operating system characteristic. Along with data and applications, the aforementioned U.S. Patent Application also allows for the migration of, files, user settings and user preferences, and hardware settings. User-specific settings include internet bookmarks, e-mail settings, names, addresses, telephone numbers, and the like. Hardware-specific settings include the designation of MODEMS, printers, scanners, displays, and the like that are to be used.
The Abstract of the aforementioned U.S. Patent Application states:                A method and apparatus for relocating application programs, settings, menus, files and documents from a source computer to a target computer. The method and apparatus function properly regardless of whether the source and target computers have the same hardware or operating system. The method includes scanning the source and target machines for all applications programs, settings, menus, files, and documents in order to create a relocation strategy. The relocation strategy is created in view of pre-programmed selection rules or selection rules created by the user. The strategy is then implemented by copying, replacing or merging data from the source machine to the target machine.        
While the aforementioned U.S. Patent Application discloses useful migration approaches, it does not address disaster recovery, system back-ups used for disaster recovery, catastrophic system failures, and the need to restore the components from a backed-up, failed system to a new system.
Therefore, there is a great unfilled need to provide a tool or tools which can both completely backup computer systems and the like, and to allow the intelligent restoration of the backup information on a target computer system with a dissimilar hardware or operating system, so that the improvements of the target system over the source system are utilized, while maintaining the desirable information and settings from the source system.
The prior art problems associated with disaster recovery and then (as they are not integrated) migration are magnified in a network environment where a server or other central computer must perform these operations for a number of networked end-user computers. Chief among the problems are the astronomical storage space sometimes required to backup each networked computer, and the undue burden on the system resources during the many backup operations that can degrade overall system performance.
The prior art also lacks efficient means of availing safe, robust, and cost-effective backup and migration resources to a large number of computer users who do not have the wherewithal to perform their own extensive periodic backups that can be migrated to a new machine in the case of system failure or upgrade.